Belladonna Minx

"No Title"
Illustration
49 x 39 cm
 
My coffee painting shows city worker and coffee farmer each saying to the other “I couldn’t survive without coffee”. This statement has different meaning for each of them, illustrated by the images behind. To city worker, coffee gets him through long days commuting at sunrise and working late. To a farmer, it literally means survival, his livelihood, shown by the image of the coffee farm. This juxtaposition of producer and consumer and the different importance of coffee to each is the main theme. The train represents the journey from bean to cup and the use of water along the way. The protagonists speaking the statement to each other represents the mutual dependence of producer and consumer. Many people in the developed world rely on coffee, but if we don’t help coffee farmers access clean drinking water so they can survive, our caffeine fix is not the only thing at risk. Thus the final theme is water, shown by the water pump on the farm, and the importance of water is represented by placement of the waterfall, an indirect reference to Project Waterfall, at the centre of the picture.